The Adventure of the Second (and Third, and Fourth) Stain
by Skywriter11
Summary: "You don't just find a four year old." Fluffy drabbles about life with a child in 221B for John Watson.
1. The First Stain

**The Adventure of the Second (and Third, and Fourth) Stain**

I do not own these two even a little bit. They were unceremoniously taken away from the BBC, who has them on loan from Arthur Conan Doyle.

My lovely flatmate is in tech for a show, so I offered to write a fluff piece to cheer her up. She's a fan of domestic Johnlock. This is what happens.

**xxx**

"You don't just _find_ a four year old," John attempted various breathing exercises pushed on him by his therapist in an attempt to not scare the slip of a girl hiding behind Sherlock's trench coat. She peered out, blinked large brown eyes at him, then disappeared back behind the infuriatingly smiling man with a flick of her braid.

Sherlock shrugged, a slow, full-bodied motion. "Well I did. One of the women from the crack house entrusted her to my care for the time being."

"So, when a woman from a _crack house_ where you were supposedly 'under cover'-" John silenced Sherlock with a look when he opened his mouth to protest, "was high, you just made off with her child?"

"Good lord, John, I did not 'make off' with her child. The woman was clearly unable to take care of the girl for herself, and I volunteered my services."

"You really think you'll make a better parent?"

"No, I think _you_ will."

**xxx**

It was exactly like the ill-advised tropical fish Sherlock had brought home after another one of their cases. Sherlock cooed over it in his way (which is to say, considered multiple experiments such as dropping nicotine patches into the tank to see what would happen) for three days, then John was left to clean up the mess. He fed it, watered it, checked the water chemical levels, then eventually said a short prayer before flushing it down the toilet. When he mentioned it to Sherlock, his flatmate had no idea what he was talking about. "Must have deleted it," was his brusque explanation.

John hoped to whatever being presided over 221B that Sherlock would not "delete" the information of his adopted ward. Not that he was exactly involved in the normal day-to-day of Ella's life. John had actually shooed him out of the administrative office when they were attempting to enroll her in kindergarten; how anyone could _sneer_ so much at young children's artwork, he wasn't really sure, but it was definitely setting the headmaster on edge. With Sherlock out of the room, securing a beginning education for Ella was much simpler. She'd started inundating them with colouring book pages and her own sketches of her "family," and John had been dutifully posting them on the refrigerator.

It was one of Ella's attempts at drawing said family that left smudges all over the floor in the living room. She'd taken to lying across the rug in front of John's chair while she drew, curled up like a cat. Unsurprisingly, Sherlock tended to regard her with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing a strange new creature. Surprisingly, Ella did the same. But John she followed around like a silent puppy, always watching, millimeters away from being underfoot.

On this particular occasion, however, her usually lazy scribblings had started to become agitated, her marker bleeding through crossed-out tears in the paper onto the floor. John peered over her shoulder to see a bunch of half-drawn figures that had been crossed out, with arrows pointing all over the page. "FAMILY" was scrawled at the top, as usual, but this time it was followed by a question mark. "What do you have there, Ella?" he asked, trying to sound gentle to mask his concern.

Her brow was furrowed as she expanded her diagram. "We talked about our families today in class," she muttered, as frustrated as a four-year old could. "Everyone has a mummy and a daddy and a brother or sister and a dog. I'm trying to figure out who is who." She looked up at the skull for a moment, nibbling at the end of a purple marker, then asked, "Is that the dog or the brother?"

John paled, then turned it around so it wasn't staring at the girl then said, "Neither," in a choked voice.

Ella frowned, crossing something out. "Alice is Mummy, but she doesn't do what all the other girls' mums do. Is she still my mother then?" A shadowy figure whose label had been crossed out and rewritten four separate times stood off from the others, representing Ella's birth mother.

John bent down, picking up Ella's diagram with one hand and scooping her into his lap with the other. She curled into his chest, making herself small. John nearly choked at the curious image Ella had drawn of Sherlock with a collar and leash, clearly trying to figure out who in the house was the pet. "Of course she's still your parent," he stuttered a bit after clearing his throat. "So am I, and so is Sherlock," John told her, drawing each person and labeling them with simply their first names.

Ella looked up at him, confused. "Mr. Sherlock definitely doesn't act like the other daddies in the class," she told him.

He chuckled to himself, bouncing her on his knee a bit. "No, he definitely does not. He's less of a – ahem – _daddy_ and more of a, well, a Sherlock."

Ella nodded. "I think I understand now." She slid off of his lap, dragging her drawing behind her. John went back to his book as Ella went back to sketching more serenely.

After another half hour or so, he got up to start dinner, and almost dropped right there when he saw she'd drawn Mrs. Hudson in the dog collar.


	2. The Second Stain

"What about that squishy thing there?" Ella asked, peering into the refrigerator, pointing at a suspiciously shaped gray, meaty mass that was dripping onto one of Mrs. Hudson's best china plates.

"Er, lets not," John told her, grimacing. He was holding the only four non-moldy slices of bread in the house in one hand and about a tablespoon's worth of margarine in a very crumpled wrapper in the other. John was attempting to feed the child something made in their own kitchen, rather than takeout for the sixth night in a row. However, it was becoming more and more clear that that would end in a trip to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. Ella shot him a questioning look that demanded to know why not.

"Because that's a human brain, child," Sherlock told her, sweeping into the room. He ignored John's sputtering in the background and turned instead to Ella. She had not screamed or even really looked away from the plate. She simply shrugged and turned back to Sherlock, who looked impressed with the girl. "What are we going to eat, then?"

John huffed and looked down at his tapping foot, which Sherlock knew meant trouble. Hoping to score enough brownie points to sneak the jar of eyeballs he'd procured into the flat later, Sherlock volunteered. "I'll go grocery shopping." John looked stunned, which Sherlock hoped would later translate to pleased. Ella perked up, looking interested with only the slightest shade of apprehension.

Sherlock clapped his hands once, then reached for his keys. Ella cast a slightly worried glance at John, who just shrugged in a _what's the worst that could happen _way. He immediately stopped that line of thinking – the worst that could happen where Sherlock was concerned was not something to shrug about. He opened his mouth to stop the whole affair, but Sherlock was already halfway out the door, towing Ella behind him. "Back before dinner!" he called over his shoulder, and then the door slammed and they were gone.

x-x-x

Ella was making fish faces at a whole swordfish, nose pressed against the glass when Sherlock arrived at the counter, balancing several jars with suspiciously shaped matter floating inside. "He saying anything interesting?" Sherlock asked seriously, sneaking up on the girl and whispering in her ear.

Rather than jumping a bit, as was the probable intended effect, Ella simply turned on her heel and frowned at him. Sherlock tried not to look too pouty. "Mostly, he just seems kind of annoyed that he's dead," Ella said matter-of-factly. A fit of coughs erupted from Sherlock as he half-failed to stifle a fit of laughter. "Also he's lonely."

Sherlock's mouth twisted into a wry smile as a plan formed itself in front of him. He signaled to the fishmonger to get his attention.

x-x-x

John heard the dripping sound from outside of the door and cringed. He knew that Mrs. Hudson would probably hear it coming from upstairs and would be in later to chastise him, but he was too curious to worry too much about it until after an investigation.

There was a sharp knock at the door, and he swung it open to reveal Sherlock, who immediately brushed past him into the kitchen. Behind him stood Ella, clutching a bag of ice with – dear lord – was that an _entire swordfish_ inside? It was almost as big as she was! The bag of ice was dripping water onto the wood floor, leaving water stains that would no doubt be taken out of their ever-dwindling security deposit.

"She insisted on carrying it home herself," Sherlock muttered from the dining room, where he was clearing leftover piles of paper from any possible surface. "Dibs on the head."


End file.
